Current state of NI - interesting thread on reddit

This is one of the best posts this forum has seen, tbh.

 

Do you really think this is gonna happen in the near future? Or in the distant future? Since this is some real low level core feature of the audio engine it would take an enormous amout of manpower and effort to get everything work together. And if you look back at the history of the Maschine development, where the list of outstanding bugs just get longer and longer, I highly doubt that the delevopmet team will get a green light for this. This does not create money but cost money. Investors have no interests in this. My personal point of view is, that everything will stay the same and new features will just get stacked onto existing codebase. Like it is done since the introduction of 2.0. And with the fluctuation regarding the employed coders it is obvious for me that the new people have no clue what's going on in the code. Which makes It nearly impossible to maintain the code without breaking anything. I think that's the real reason why development ist so slow and the code is full of bugs. I have a 12 core i9 (24 with hyperthreating) @ 3.4 Mhz and 128 gig of ram. And even this machine get maxed out with a few instances of plugins, instruments and samples inside Maschine at 64 samples latency. I have Cubase sessions with +250 tracks of orchestral recordings and programming with nearly 500 plugins. No problems at 64 samples...

 

Precisely why this move towards ‘one native’ sounds like such a bad idea. Seems like a more closed, more self contained ecosystem. From the name, from the moves NI have been making, the talk about silo’s.

If a groovebox wants to stay relevant it needs to be open and easy to integrate in all the other systems. Not be a bunch of poorly integrated systems. Home studios are gonna be much more modular and less oriented around a workstation/daw. It’s not the box that’s unique.. a piece of plastic with some buttons and knobs, hey hey! What they’re selling is the workflow, and they’ve been mucking it up there. Let’s use Battery inside Komplete Kontrol, inside Maschine inside Ableton... sweet!

 

I really don't undestand any contrary thinking to this surely the better integration with other systems you offer the more reasons you are giving for people to prefer your product. Make a good product and save on advertising costs...............

 

LoL! But can you use Komplete Kontrol in Maschine?

 

where to send my money to? you sir are a genious...and you call that a crappy animation? it's pure gold (but probably will introduced - if ever - in version 12)...

D-One: do all of us a favour please: can you put this "crappy animation" (you called it that) in the suggestion forum?...this will get a million likes in about 12 seconds i guess

 

Or in the BETA forum

 

This is not a Maschine thing in particular. But this thread has been about the general future of NI.. and among my criticisms has been NI getting too focused on some genres to the detriment of others.

VERY PLEASED to see the new Kontakt library released today.. Session Guitarist - Picked Acoustic. These sounds can be used across all genres. NI needs to be more genre-agnostic in its presentation.

 

VST3 support is being added to Maschine, so pigs can fly...

 

oink!

 

Well since you asked....

I see a distinction between Maschine the software, and Maschine the Hardware. The software holds the the data, buts its the hardware which translates our impluses into music.

Traditional hardware at its best allows us access to our unconsious, to find those unexplored, unexpected ideas. This hardware should be about finding what you don't yet know, you know. At its best it should be play, so it becomes an extention of our intuition.

The software has a ways to go. we know this, we accept this. There is no reason why the next generation of hardware shouldn't take a tangential leap into new territory. The hardware as it stands has borrowed much from the MPC. It seems to me, compared to what it might be, the hardware has barely evolved from the MPC.

Take my example. Those Arch monome encoders seem a radical [really cool] departure from the current musical paradigmn. If only it were cheaper and in the hands of the masses.

I have to wonder if NI has a R&D laboratory worth its beans, and to what extend that team are allowed to dream tomorrow's sounds.
My dream interface would encompas 'sound design' and beats making. It would go back to basic, asking the question how do we make music, it would use the idea of sampling, as a paradigmn instead of an end in itself.

The software can continue to be what it is, it can continue to grow in the same way we see it growing. The hardware though has the potential radically shift the ways we make sounds.

My dream hardware would be minimalistic. it would be multi-adaptive, so that from one phase to the next, its minimal interface had a variety of other functions. It would be based on the screen. The screen would function much like the leds on those Arch encoders, representing our relation the rythmn and the sound. The screen would be assisted with a variety of useful 'relavent' tactile interfaces. so we'd have the usual knobs, buttons, pads, but then you have other interfaces designed to accept other kinds of gestures, motions. Tactile interactions, which would lend themselves to the performance of these ideas. Key is how we represent those evolving forms. New ways to view and then influence the results.

This interface would evolve. Instead of the next 'expansion pack' of sounds and genras. Those expansion would present us with new interfaces. New ways to see the same thing, New ways to do the same thing. The interface designer would become the artist.

I would like to see those concepts we expect for the manipulation of Audio, have their equivalent in midi. So we can take midi data, zoom in and out on it. speed it up, slow it down. chop it, flip it. time stretch it. warp it. I'd like to see NI come up with the interfaces to represent and manipulate Midi, in new and unimagined ways. Our current interface is the equavalent of a word processer, crude and clunky..

And then there's sound design. .

 

Send it to my paypal, i'll dm you my details

I am kind of surprised my post had that many likes, thats kind of unusual here.

I've put many other similar stuff there, (most much simpler to implement than this modulation overhaul example) I also often add mockups or animations to other users requests, re-write posts, organize them, etc... that's how I ended up a mod but after a few years, many requests and zero of them happening or having any sort of impact I had completely given up to be honest so I decided to stop posting, both here and the beta. So far it's been a pointless request dump...

Since around the time that Kai arrived there seems to be a change and a will from NI to deliver on user requests so I'll probably start posting again once in a while, for the modulation thing, I'll have to give it more thought before posting, perhaps it can generate an interesting discussion of ideas and inspire the NI people who might be working on it or will work on it when the time comes.

 

What company has a true direction anymore?
That money that was infused into NI probably hurt more than helped their direction by adding an additional level of bean counters.

 

I think Kai is doing a sterling job so far and it's very much appreciated, just a shame that the other areas of NI don't seem to have a similar approach other than having seemingly a very suspect lip service.

 

Yeah, what areas do you mean exactly though? KK?
Looking back I think it's clear now that Kai came into the picture around a 1 year ago because the restructuring that is happening now was planned since that time.

 

No what's happening with KK seems to be at least part of Kai's remit anyway.

The recent kerfuffle over the layoffs etc and what direction NI are going in is currently somewhat hard to fathom and whilst seemingly they say they want to be more open and community based the recent thread by Paul has probably caused more consternation than it has eased by him not reappearing making it seem remarkably more like a dubious public relations misfire.

 

Oh, I see, so it's pretty much the same thing I replied to you on that thread.
Well, it had the opposite effect on me, I understood some things better and I am less concerned about the layoffs and subscription thing, then again I didn't have many concerns to begin with.

 

The problem being a great many people have as can be seen in the threads .......................

 

Yeah, totally, I believe some answers are there in plain English while some aren't, I'm not trying to convince anyone to be optimistic.
I think many users specifically want a "NI is never going be a subscription-only only company" statement, the chances of that happening are zero to none IMO so... those people will worry forever.

Maschine is already confirmed to not be going in that direction, I am assuming KK as well since it's a similar product, I own K12CE so it cant be taken away from me so I personally rather not lose any hair thinking about the worst, I am not criticizing people that do though, at the end of the day it's their hair

 

And there's the rub because why is that? The problem is it's all of NI's own creation. They created the complete lack of trust. They made the speech referencing Adobe. How did they think it was going to be taken and again it is not engendering trust by saying you are listening and then NOT addressing those concerns..that just creates more problems and indicates they will possibly never learn from their past because it is very much still their present.